Finding the Holes, Filling the Gaps: A Bibliometric Analysis of Expert Expectations on Public Administration Trends and Key Concepts in the Literature

Academic expertise on public administration and public policy and the literature in these fields do not always connect. Many contested concepts exist in public administration, where academics and researchers do not have a... [ view full abstract ]

Academic expertise on public administration and public policy and the literature in these fields do not always connect. Many contested concepts exist in public administration, where academics and researchers do not have a clear consensus of the importance, scope or reach of the ideas within the literature. This paper aims to examine some of these concepts by analysing and assessing the full corpus of literature on these concepts. In addition, it is unclear where this academic debate can be placed in regard to practical discussions of public administration and public administration reform. This paper will explore the following research question: how have key public administration concepts developed in the social sciences literature over time? What are the academic and practical implications of the robustness of these concepts?
This research draws on a survey of all European public administration academics, who were asked what they saw as the key trends in the discipline, which would become more important with time, and which would diminish in importance. These results were used to compile a list of key concepts in public administration. The main focus of the paper will be on examining the bibliometric breadth and depth of these key concepts in order to develop a conceptual map of public administration and how this differs across disciplines and sub-disciplines. Methodologically, the research will use bibliometric analysis to examine these concepts across the social sciences. This will provide a bibliometric database of approximately 15,000 articles (using Web of Science) and 650,000 cited references. These can be used to analyse key research and sources used in conceptualising key ideas in public administration, how these concepts travel across disciplines and how research clusters develop over time. By identifying key articles, more fine-grained qualitative and quantitative analyses of the meaning of these key concepts can also be developed and theorised based on the breadth of the concepts through the discipline and the depth of the concepts in terms of cited references. The paper is highly relevant to understanding academic and practical applications of key concepts in public administration. First, it will provide insight into how concepts develop, grow and spread academically and across disciplines in both normative and analytical ways. This allows for an assessment of the robustness of these concepts, with bibliometrics providing a quantitative approach to understanding the breadth and depth of the public administration literature. Second, it will provide insight into new areas and disciplines into which these public administration concepts are moving and how they can be theorised, thus highlighting where innovative approaches to conceptualisation may be found and how academic work can be linked to practical applications of public administration concepts. This delivers a clear, systematic and quantitative way of assessing the literature and identifying gaps between public administration knowledge and expertise and the relevant literature on key trends in public administration.